Insurance companies make money from two sources - from the premiums they collect and from the investments they make. Low interest rates and weak returns from investments over prolonged periods force property and casualty insurers to improve underwriting margins, which is not always easy. Organic growth remains a challenge for international as well as domestic property and casualty insurance companies like MGIC Investment Corp. (NYSE:MTG) and Radian Group Inc. (NYSE:RDN). StockCall has issued technical analysis and charting reports on MGIC and Radian. Download these free researches now at

During the late 1990s there was a substantial decline in property and casualty premiums, which is why the industry is considered as "soft". This is nothing new for the industry as the last time the property and casualty market was really "hard" was way back in 1985. There are however always exceptions related to geographies (major catastrophes) and some particular types of property and casualty insurance.

As the property and casualty insurance companies struggle with challenges posed by increased competition, uncertainty surrounding scope and timing of regulatory changes and gradual increase in claims including weather related claims of enormous proportions such as with the recent super storm Sandy. The encouraging factor, however, is that new companies are not showing up with the same speed as before. What the industry needs to do is to adopt a holistic approach to opportunities and the challenges it faces.

MGIC Investment Corp. and Radian Group Inc. Brief Description

Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation, the principal subsidiary of MGIC Investment Corp. is a private mortgage insurer that is licensed in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico and offers an alternative to federal government insurance programs. As of September 30, 2012, the company covered 1 million mortgages with $164.9 billion primary insurance in force. Download the free research on MGIC today by registering now at

Radian Group is a credit enhancement company that focuses on first-lien residential mortgage insurance in the domestic market. The company operates in two segments - mortgage insurance and financial guaranty. Recently, the company announced availability of mortgage insurance rates through an application, Radian Rates, for Android devices on Google Play. Radian Rates is a mobile version of its existing online rate finder that allows lenders to access mortgage insurance rates on the go. Sign up and have access to our free report on Radian at

In the first nine months of 2012 there was a difference of $8 billion between new insurance written by the two companies. While RDN wrote new insurance worth $25.4 billion, MTG could manage only $17.1 billion.

Under normal conditions, the profit margin of both companies is expected to be similar, which means that it is safe to presume that the difference between profits of both companies will be in the same proportion as the premiums collected by them. Going by that logic, profit of MTG should be roughly one-third of RDN's profit.

That, however, is a very primitive way of assessing the long-term effect of new insurances written by the two companies. The fact is that in an effort to boost its cash flows, Radian has been undercutting competitors in single premium policies, which form 35% of the new insurance it writes. For a fair comparison, single premium business needs to be removed from new insurance written by Radian.

Radian will be releasing its earnings today (data were not available at the time this article was completed).

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